


On the Seafront

by oubliance



Category: A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Academia, M/M, Neutrois Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 15:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oubliance/pseuds/oubliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robespierre, Danton and Camille go to a conference. Sometimes Camille's talks go brilliantly, but he's not what you might call reliable. (A follow-up to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/734701">Free People</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/806397">The Enemy Within</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Seafront

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hedge_witch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedge_witch/gifts).



> A huge thank you to everyone with whom I've discussed details of this alternate universe.  
> [](http://www.tracemyip.org/)  
> 

There’s no point in knocking, for Camille will not answer, but Robespierre’s key card is slippery with sweat – all the way up in the lift, he’s been clutching it – and two failed attempts bedevil him. At last it works. He opens the door quietly, saying, ‘Camille? I saw Georges-Jacques having a coffee and he said – ’ Impossible to go on. What Georges-Jacques Danton said, with his heartless cherry Danish in his heartless hand, was that Camille had crashed: _crashed_ , he said, frowning, _and bloody burned_. At that, Robespierre stayed no longer, though reproach scrabbled in his breast like a furious mouse. He wanted to say, why didn’t you follow him, stay with him, console him?

He says, ‘Camille, it’s all right, where are you?’ And though there is neither an answer nor any sound at all, instinct leads him with hardly a pause into the en suite bathroom, where Camille is curled on the floor of the shower. Robespierre crouches and finds his hand. ‘Come and sit on the bed,’ he says, ‘Unless you want to have a real shower – is that why you’re in here?’ 

Camille shakes his head. He has never been able to fathom how it is that perfectly clever people, such as Max, can keep believing in reasons as it appears they do. They’re a witty game, Camille thinks, the cosmos sitting down to a round of mah-jong: no matter what your strategy, he tells himself, don’t trust it over-much; and the world? Even less. He listens to Max, who is saying, ‘Do you want me to help you?’ His question might refer to no more than the adumbrated shower, but Camille allows it to weave about in his mind like a yacht with a yellow sail. Yes, he thinks. Yes, Max, I still want you to help me, on occasion. Light from the frosted window of the bathroom holds him as still as a fish in the college pond, dead with summer, or with something else. 

Robespierre sits on the mat by the shower. He strokes Camille’s knuckles slowly, counting their cold little bones in his head, and listens to other delegates – and perhaps other guests, staying at the hotel not for work, but pleasure – in the corridor. A few seconds of laughter. Indistinguishable talk. With the panels still running downstairs, even his anxiety does not seem wholly licit, though he’d sooner attempt to fly than leave Camille alone now. He’s never been one to slip off early. This morning he collected their conference packs and remarked with inward dread that he and Camille were speaking at the same time, in the three o’clock slot; yet he followed his custom, an old one now, and circled all the panels he wished to attend. No use, he remembers thinking, in borrowing trouble: or is there? 

He thinks of things to say, but voices none of them. A pill, a doctor, a call to the clinic. If that’s what is needed, he should do it now, or they’ll all have left for the evening. He moves closer, pressing himself to the edge of the shower tray, releases Camille’s hand and touches his shoulder instead. I want him to know I’m here, Robespierre tells himself. Camille is wearing a voluminous leather jacket, recognisably belonging to Gabriel Mirabeau. Touching him through the billowed leather, the swagged folds of hide, is like trying to comfort Achilles from outside the tent, Robespierre thinks. Camille lets his head fall back. His throat looks like marble in the late afternoon light; his face is that of a child who would like to cry for weariness and be lifted at once to its father’s shoulder, but cannot.

Camille does not think about work, or his talk, or what happened. Instead he remembers the hour from ten o’clock to eleven, when Professor Lafayette’s plenary appealed to him as little as to Georges-Jacques and they escaped onto the seafront. Outside the shops, windmills made from shiny paper spun in the salty west wind, but there were no children to buy them. ‘Term isn’t over,’ Georges said. He’d given Camille his hand. ‘Not till next week. Look at the donkeys, poor brutes – no one to ride them. Boring as hell, I suppose.’ Camille thought, it would be no better if they were ridden: they are troubled by their captivity, as you would be. Georges let go of him and walked away to buy ice cream, so Camille went to the edge of the road, where steps marched down to the sands themselves, and looked at the donkeys more closely. Quite against his will, his eyes began to burn with grief. When Georges came back he was in surreptitious tears. He turned away from the strawberry ice cream cone that was held out to him. 

And then Georges-Jacques bent down and kissed me, Camille thinks: a kiss of salt, because I was crying, and chocolate, because he’d already started eating his ice cream. He couldn’t touch me otherwise, because he was holding a cone in each hand. He said we should go and walk on the sands. He said, ‘Let’s go down now, it tastes better on the beach. We don’t have to walk near the donkeys: we can go the other way. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to?’ 

Camille thought, I can’t walk in the sand, I’ll fall. He was wearing bronze-coloured shoes with French heels, and white silk tights, a Christmas present from Lucile. If she hadn’t given them to me, he’d wanted to say, I’d ruin them in a moment to walk on the beach with you; believe me, Georges-Jacques, believe everything I say. He looked up into the blue eyes, met their surveillance and bit his lip, but before he could embark on an excuse, Georges said, ‘I’ll carry your shoes; here, come over to the bench.’ His shoes were gone in a moment, his tights rolled up in Georges-Jacques’ trouser pocket, and hand-in-hand they went down the steps to the beach, where the sand flew up in billows and dropped down again, and Camille’s ice cream dripped into the half-broken shells as it melted. 

Now Camille thinks: as far as I could tell what I wanted, I didn’t want to come back. Georges-Jacques had to speak at twelve, though, so we couldn’t stay. He brushed the sand off my feet, didn’t he? I remember that. I’m sure I didn’t make it up: as sure as I can be, that is.

Robespierre says, ‘Let’s go into the bedroom.’

Camille looks at him, and although he wears no watch and has not been keeping track, he knows they’ve been there a long time. He tries to say that he is sorry, but the words refuse to come: even such easy words as these are rebels, he thinks, dyed-in-the-wool rebels. What made me entertain the illusion that I’d be able to give my paper? God knows, Georges knows, Gabriel knows; I don’t. 

‘Come, Camille,’ Robespierre says. They go into the other room together and he unbuttons Camille’s clothing like a nursemaid, or like a father, his fingers catching despite themselves in the intricacies of the lace. He says, ‘Can you tell me what happened? Georges didn’t say, not really. Was it the questions again?’ 

No, Camille thinks, it wasn’t the questions. And in looking for a reason, Max, you are mistaken as can be: I tell you, or I would if I could talk, things were veritably on the up. I was thinking about the concept of happiness while he dusted the sand from my feet. I seemed so free, and the donkeys all the more pitiful for that – a foil, I suppose, for the jewel of my inexplicably vast liberty. There was almost no traffic and I could hear the windmills across the road, whispering round and round in the wind. I should have given one of my best performances for the remainder of the day.

He says, ‘It was only the words.’ His voice shatters again and again. He tries once more, shorter. ‘Only words,’ he says, and Robespierre by dint of long practice understands him, but it is too late, it is not enough. His hand is Robespierre’s; his throat is sorrow’s.


End file.
